Barnabas & John Mark vs. Saul/Paul & Silas

Good morning, Good News Church. Happy Father's Day to you. Glad that you are

here. Let me start off with this thought.

Ministry is beautiful. Ministry is awesome when you back up and look at it from a distance.

Ministry is often messy when you

zoom in real close and observe an actual situation. Have you noticed that?

Yeah, so sometimes you do something to serve the Lord. I'll just give you examples.

You're trying to help a poor person get reliable transportation so that they

can get a job or so that they don't lose their job.

Or you are discipling someone who has a bunch of false beliefs and you're trying

to help them figure out between true and false.

Or you are trying to successfully rebuke someone who was going down the wrong

path and you're trying to get them back on the right path.

Or you're helping to rebuild someone's life after a terrible loss.

Many of those situations are beautiful when it's kind of done and you can look

back and review the story as a whole.

But many of those situations are messy when you zoom into a particular day or

a particular circumstance and you remember what happened, right?

So today, we finish up a two-part series called Rough Patches in Ministry.

And I wanted to review just a little bit from last week, especially if you weren't here last week.

When we are talking about ministry here in this series, we said this last week,

we are not using that word to describe what I do for a living.

We are using the word ministry, meaning Christians using their talents and using

their resources to serve the Lord with their life.

And we said that what we're going to do when we say rough patches in ministry,

we are going to look at some places in the early church, really early on in

the New Testament, where there were conflicts.

There were conflicts in the early church. And so I said, we're going to look

at two episodes of conflicts in the early Christian church.

So last week, we looked at Acts chapter six. That was one of the first conflicts in the early church.

Today, we're going to look at Acts chapter 15.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

And in Acts chapter 15, we're going to see a well-known disagreement between Barnabas and Paul.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

But I think understanding the backstory will help make more sense of this.

So rather than just jumping straight into Acts 15, let me give you sort of a

summary of the whole book of Acts, and then what leads up to our story today.

So if you have your Bible, you can turn to the book of Acts.

I'm going to read from chapter 1.

Acts chapter 1, this is probably one of the most famous verses in the book of

Acts 1 · chapter mention

Acts. It's Acts chapter 1, verse 8.

Acts 1:8

Jesus is the one speaking, and he kind of gives an outline of the whole book here.

Acts chapter one, verse eight says this.

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you.

And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, and Samaria,

and to the ends of the earth.

So Jesus gathers his disciples together. And I don't know if you know much about

the book of Acts, but Jesus is not really a main character in the book of Acts,

like he is in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Okay, Matthew, Mark,

Luke, and John, Jesus is the main character.

Acts, Jesus is only in chapter one. He ascends to heaven. And the rest of the

book is about the stories of the early church.

But Jesus is in this chapter, and he's the one speaking here.

And he gathers his disciples together one last time before he ascends to heaven.

And this is the last thing we know of that he said.

He says, you're going to receive power. The Holy Spirit is going to come on

you, fall on you. Okay, you're gonna get the Holy Spirit.

And the Holy Spirit is going to empower you to do something.

And I think what's implied here is he's going to empower you to do something

you wouldn't ordinarily be able to do.

And the power that he's gonna give you is he's gonna enable you to be my witnesses,

in Jerusalem and in all Judea and to the ends of the earth.

The word witness means like someone that, like when someone speaks of what they

saw or what they heard, like that's what a witness is, right?

Like a witness of a car accident or a witness in a courtroom.

They say, this is what I saw, this is what I heard.

So he's saying, you are gonna be the people who testify. You're gonna be the

people that tell what you saw and what you heard. You're gonna be the people

that tell everybody about me.

You're gonna receive power in such a way that you're gonna tell about me.

Now look at this, in Jerusalem, that's the city they were standing in.

And then he says, in all Judea and Samaria, that would have been nearby areas,

and to the ends of the earth.

So he makes this prediction, and it really is, I think, a prediction.

It's not really a command. He doesn't say, in this verse, he doesn't say,

go do it. He says, you're going to do it.

Like, you will. The Holy Spirit will come, and this is what you are going to do.

You're going to take the message about me, and you're going to take it here,

and there, and everywhere.

You're going to take the message about me, and you're going to spread it all

over the earth. And that is such an audacious prediction that the book of Acts starts with that way.

Jesus is there in Jerusalem. The guy has hardly ever walked too far away from

that. Like he stayed in Israel, I think his whole life, unless Decapolis is

not counted as part of that. Anyway, sorry, I should have just done the work

ahead of time and not done this in my head right now.

Anyway, point is Jesus didn't travel all over the world. He hung around Israel

for most of his life and now he's in Jerusalem and most of the people in the

world, they haven't heard of him, right? And here he is with his followers and

he says, here's what's going to happen.

The news about me is going to spread through you to everywhere.

To the ends of the earth. And the reason that is an audacious prediction is

because he said this in a time period where newspapers hadn't been invented yet.

Radio hadn't been invented yet. TV hadn't been invented yet.

Internet hadn't been invented yet. No, social media hadn't happened. TikTok didn't happen.

He was saying that the news about me is gonna spread through you to everywhere

on the earth. And he said that at a time period where there wasn't any message

that was spreading everywhere on earth.

It was impossible for stuff to spread all over the earth. And he said,

well, that's what's going to happen with me. And he was right.

I mean, here we are 2,000 years later. We are on the other side of the world

from the place he was standing when he said this. Like, we are at the other

end of the earth from the perspective of where he was. And he said this.

And we've heard about Jesus.

I think probably everybody that's in this room had heard about Jesus before you walked in.

So that's crazy prediction that came true.

But the truth is, this prediction really starts to come true even within the

first generation of people that heard this. Like, it's not just that it's done

a lot in the past 2,000 years. There was a lot that happened in that first generation

of people in the early church. And that's what the book of Acts is about.

The book of Acts starts with, this is going to spread all over.

And then when you get to the end of the book of Acts, you see that what the

book is, is this big, long story of how it spread all over.

So I'm going to skip from this. This is the first chapter. Now I'm going to

skip to the last chapter of the book of Acts to show you how it ends.

Acts chapter, I think it's 28. So let me go and flip there now.

So basically, we were on the first chapter of Acts.

And so if you were just flipping through the book of Acts, you'll see that it

contains story after story after story of people going around telling people

about Jesus, like people being witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria

and to the ends of the earth.

That's what you see is happening throughout the book of Acts for 28 chapters.

And then you finally get to the end. Okay.

So Acts chapter 28, this is the final sentence of the book I'm going to read to you.

Acts 28 · chapter mention

Then he stayed two whole years in his own rented house, and he welcomed all

who visited him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching the things concerning

the Lord Jesus Christ with full boldness and without hindrance.

That's how the book of Acts ends. Okay, now if you go, I don't,

what is that about? Let me explain what's going on here. So the he here is the apostle Paul.

Okay Paul is one of the most incredible messengers of Jesus Christ during this

time period he stayed two whole years in his own rented house anybody know like

what city he was in where he was renting this house and he hung out for two years anybody know,

okay Rome that's correct that's very good because most a lot of times at church

you want to go Jesus when they ask a question.

Jesus was not the correct answer. Rome was the correct answer.

He stayed two whole years in this rented house in Rome, and he proclaims the

kingdom of God, and he teaches things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ.

He's sharing the gospel, so I guess what I want you to see is this is what happens

in the book of Acts. Book of Acts starts with Jesus saying, the news about me

is going to spread all over the place to the ends of the earth.

He was in Jerusalem when he said that. The book of Acts Acts ends with one of

his messengers in the capital city of the empire preaching the gospel without

hindrance and with full boldness.

The gospel is going forth to the Romans in their capital city,

nowhere near Jerusalem when the book ends.

And so when you look at the book of Acts, you see how it begins,

you see how it ends. And this is what I was trying to refer to earlier when

I said when you step back and you look at the big picture, you see how awesome ministry is.

But in between Acts chapter 1 and Acts chapter 28, there are several rough patches.

Acts 1 · chapter mention Acts 28 · chapter mention

There are several rough patches, and today I'd like to tell you about one of

them, the split up of Barnabas and John Mark from Paul and Silas.

So the story is, the pinnacle is Acts 15, but we're going to start in Acts 11

so that we see what leads up to it.

So if you have your Bible, you can go to Acts chapter 11, and here's our story for this morning.

Acts 11 · chapter mention

Acts 11, starting in verse 19. It says, those who had been scattered as a result

of the persecution that started because of Stephen made their way as far as

Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, speaking the message to no one except Jews.

So what's happening here when it says those who had been scattered,

it's talking about Christians, early Christians.

They had been scattered as a result of the persecution that had started because

of Stephen. Remember last week where I talked about how the early Christians

were persecuted there in Jerusalem?

So there was a really bad one that involves Stephen. Stephen ends up dying.

They stoned him to death.

Stephen is a character from last week's sermon. Do you remember that?

Where there was the 12, and then they set aside the seven. They appointed the

seven to a particular duty. This guy was one of the seven, Stephen.

So when he was stoned to death, there was this persecution where tons of Christians

just started running. They said, we were going to be the next people that they

kill. Let's get out of here.

So they all start running, and it says, as they ran out of the city so they

wouldn't get killed, they made their way as far as Phoenicia,

Cyprus, and Antioch. In other words, some of them ran.

And they went really far away. And then when they went and settled in these

new cities, they're Christians, they know the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And so they start sharing it with other people in the new cities.

But at first, they only shared the message with Jews.

Now, do you remember last week I told you all of the earliest Christians were all what?

Yeah, they were all Jews, like 100%. All the first Christians were all Jewish

people. The first few thousand Christians were all Jewish people in Jerusalem.

Now they're spreading around to different cities outside of Jerusalem,

but they're still just telling other Jewish people about Jesus until the next verse.

Verse 20. But there were some of them, Cypriot and Cyrenian men,

who came to Antioch and began speaking to the Hellenists, proclaiming the good news about Jesus.

Now the word Hellenists here seems to mean like a Greek-speaking Gentile,

okay? Hellenist is just Hellenist or Hellenistic is Greek.

And so we have these people who are already probably Greek-cultured Jewish people,

and they show up in Antioch, and they begin speaking to, not to the Jewish people,

but in contrast to the Jewish people, they start speaking to these Greek-speaking Gentiles about Jesus.

Up until this point, hardly anybody had ever told a Gentile about Jesus.

But somebody said, well, hey, we're all telling our friends about Jesus, the Messiah.

But like, there's people over there, and I know Greek, and they know Greek,

and I could tell them about Jesus. I mean, they don't even know what a Messiah

is. They didn't grow up with our stuff, but we could tell them.

And so they start doing it. They start proclaiming the good news about the Lord Jesus.

And the Lord's hand and a large number who believed turned to the Lord." This

was a very big deal. This is like one of the first times that Gentiles in cities

outside of Israel start to come to know Jesus.

So verse 22, then the report about them was heard by the church that was at

Jerusalem and they sent out Barnabas to travel as far as Antioch, right?

So you have all these Gentiles over in Antioch that all become Christians and

then the church of Jerusalem hears about it. Now remember last week I told you

the church of Jerusalem was the only church at first, right?

There was just one church. This was like, so at this point, there was just the

church. There's just, there's one church, it's in Jerusalem.

And that church here is like, whoa, there's another church. There's another

one? Yeah, up in Antioch.

And it's a church with mostly Gentiles, right? And the Jewish Christians Jerusalem

are like, what? Another church?

And mostly Gentiles? How did that even happen? That's crazy.

We weren't even trying to make that happen.

So then somebody said, well, we got to, somebody needs to go check this out, see what's going on.

And so Barnabas becomes one of the first, I guess, missionaries,

or I don't know, spy, I don't know what you want to call him,

but he's sent to go check out all of these Gentile conversions to figure out

what is going on in this other city. So he goes.

Okay, so he went and traveled as far as Antioch. When he arrived and saw the

grace of God, like he saw the grace of God, he saw God being gracious to all

these Gentiles and they were coming to know him.

And he was like, this is incredible. So he says, he was glad and encouraged

all of them to remain true to the Lord with a firm resolve of the heart.

Like, wow, you guys are Christians. You guys are following Jesus.

In fact word Christian hadn't even been invented yet right he's just like you

people are following Jesus wow like keep doing it.

For he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.

Same thing that was said about Stephen in the last week's passage.

And large numbers of people were added to the Lord, which sounds like there

were a bunch of people, Gentiles, that became Christians. Then Barnabas showed

up and started encouraging them. And then it sounds like even more Gentiles became Christians.

So now what's he going to do? Verse 25. Then he went to Tarsus to search for Saul.

And when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. And for a whole year,

they met with the church and taught large numbers. The disciples were first

called Christians at Antioch.

Okay, so what happens is Barnabas is there. He's trying to disciple all these

new Christians. It's probably overwhelming because he's like,

so what do you need to know? And they're like, well, everything.

Like we didn't grow up in church. We don't know anything. So he's trying to

teach them everything. And I'm guessing at some point it was like overwhelming.

And so he goes and gets help.

Okay, he goes to Tarsus where he knows that there's this guy named Saul.

Now Saul has two names in the Bible. Later on in the Bible, he's referred to as Paul.

So just so you know, that's all one guy. So throughout the sermon,

if I refer to someone named Saul, I'm talking about Paul.

If I refer to someone named Paul, I'm talking about Saul. All one person.

Okay, at this point, the narrator's calling him Saul. So Saul's there,

and Barnabas had heard about him earlier. Like chapters earlier,

Barnabas was aware of this guy. And so he said, I think he could help me.

So he goes to Tarsus, and he's like, hey, Saul, you love Jesus.

You want to teach people about Jesus, right? Yes, I do.

Well, there's this whole crowd of people. There are all these Christians in

Antioch. They've all been Christians for like five minutes. None of them know what to do.

Like, will you help? And Saul goes, that sounds great. I'll sure, I'll do that.

So Barnabas is kind of the first missionary to the Gentiles and he chooses Saul

to add to his team and then takes him to Antioch.

And there they meet with the church and they teach large numbers.

And they're trying to disciple all these people. And it's interesting,

these disciples finally got a name.

They were first called Christians at Antioch. Remember last week's passage I

said, this is back before the word Christian existed.

That's because that was Acts chapter six. Now we're at Acts chapter 15,

Acts 15 · chapter mention

the word Christian exists. Actually, Acts 11, the word Christian exists now,

right? That's what they started calling these people who were followers or learners of Jesus.

Okay, so now you got, you had one guy that was teaching the people and then

he brings his friend on and now there's two people that are teaching the people. Next, verse 27.

In those days, some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch.

And then one of them named Agabus stood up and predicted by the spirit that

there would be a severe famine throughout the Roman world.

This took place during the time of Claudius.

So each of the disciples, according to his ability, determined to send relief

to the brothers who lived in Judea.

They did this, sending it to the elders by means of Barnabas and Saul.

So there's our two characters again.

They're there in Antioch. A prophet says there's going to be this terrible famine.

Judging by what they say and what they do, it sounds like they realize somehow

this famine is going to greatly affect the people in Israel,

the people in the area around Jerusalem and Judea.

It's going to affect them really bad. So you have this, I don't know,

you have this camaraderie. It's like, hey, you're the church in Jerusalem.

We're the church in Antioch. You're a bunch of Jewish people.

We're a bunch of Gentile people. But we're all on the same team.

We all love Jesus. So we hear that you're about to go through a rough time.

So we're going to collect a bunch of money. And that's what they did.

And then we need to send the money

to the people in Jerusalem to get them through the famine time, right?

But to send the money, what do they have to do? God, remember,

this was a long time ago. There's no like, we'll just zeal it to you.

Okay? That was not a thing, right?

This was, they said, you got to PayPal. I don't want, I'm not going to walk

all the way to Jerusalem. No, back then it was, you got to walk all the way

to Jerusalem. Okay? So the elders did this by means of Barnabas and Saul.

Maybe they wrote animals, I don't know. But it was not just like,

I'll just fix this with an app.

Barnabas and Saul are the people that are chosen to be the delivery people so

that when they show up at Jerusalem and the famine hits, they go,

hey, church at Antioch wanted to help you get through this rough patch.

So that's what happens. Barnabas and Saul's, I mean, depending on how you define

missionary journey, this is the first missionary journey of Barnabas and Saul.

It's a famine relief effort.

All right, so that's what happens. Next, we'll skip to chapter 12, verse 24.

The famine relief thing works. Here we go, verse 24. Then God's message flourished and multiplied.

After they had completed their relief mission, Barnabas and Saul returned to

Jerusalem, taking along John, who is called Mark.

Okay, so now we have a third character that has entered in the story,

and he also has two names. So I told you, Paul is Saul, Saul is Paul.

You need to also know John is Mark, Mark is John. So throughout the story,

if I refer to John, I'm talking about Mark. If I refer to Mark, I'm talking about John.

One of the passages even calls him John Mark. Okay, so that's who this is.

A lot of people had multiple names back then.

So if you're tracking along, Barnabas is the first guy who's the missionary,

discipler guy. He brings Saul along with him and then they do a journey together

and then they bring John Mark along with them.

And it becomes a team of, you will be about to see, it's about to become a team of three, at least.

Okay, next verse, chapter 13, verse one.

In the church that was at Antioch, there were prophets and teachers.

You're gonna recognize it, gonna name five guys, you're gonna recognize some of the names.

Barnabas, yep, we know who that is. Simeon, who was called Niger,

he had two names too. A lot of guys had two names.

Simeon, who's called Niger, Lucius the Cyrenian, Mananian, a close friend of

Herod the Tetrarch, and Saul, okay?

So if you're doing the math, that's five. There's five guys that are teachers

and prophets here in Antioch.

Next thing happens is this, verse two. As they were ministering to the Lord

and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set apart for me, what are the next two names.

Barnabas and Saul. For the work I have called them to. Now, the two of them

have already done a missionary journey together.

And now God calls them to another one. I got something I want them to do.

Set them apart for the work that I have called them to. And then after they

had fasted, prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them off.

So it's interesting. For a while, Barnabas was the only teacher.

Then for a while, Barnabas and Saul were the only two teachers.

And then there were five teachers. And then right around the time there was

five teachers, the Holy Spirit says, I'm going to take these two.

You got three. You'll be fine.

You get to keep these three. I got these two and I want them to go on a special

mission for me. And so they do.

And what do the people do in reaction to what the Holy Spirit says?

It says they fasted, prayed, and laid their hands on them and sent them off.

Does that sound familiar?

Yes. It's the same thing happened in last week's passage, right?

Remember when the 12 appointed the seven to the particular job and it says they

prayed and they laid hands on them. And I told you last week that the laid hands

on them seems to mean we are officially appointing you to this duty.

That's the same thing that's happening here. The church is saying,

if this is what God wants, then we agree with him.

We officially appoint you to this duty. And so they prayed and laid hands on them and sent them off.

We will be doing this same thing later in this service.

After the sermon, we're going to call up all of the people who are counselors

for Teen Reach Adventure Camp. They're going to gather up right here.

We're going to lay hands on them and pray and send them off.

Like go minister to kids in the foster care system in the name of Jesus.

We're going to do that later on in this service.

Same thing they were doing back then. All right.

Let's keep reading. Next verse, verse 4. Being sent out by the Holy Spirit,

they came down to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus.

Arriving in Salamis, they proclaimed God's message in the Jewish synagogues.

So they always started with telling the Jewish people first,

then they moved on to Gentiles later.

So you can tell there's like, this is a port city, and then they take a boat

from there to this island, and then they arrived at this port city,

and here they are proclaiming the message.

And then look at the last sentence of the verse. They also had who?

John is their assistant. John is also what? Mark. Very good.

So we now know that at least the team is three. It could be more.

I think it probably was more. But at least there were three people.

We know that Paul, Saul, and Barnabas are on this missionary journey,

and they have chosen John, Mark, as their assistant. He's like support staff,

okay? And so they go along.

Some stuff happens. I'm going to go ahead and skip to verse 13,

same chapter. Paul and his companions, okay? Notice he's Paul now.

And his companions, who are they? At the very least, we're talking about Barnabas

and John Mark, maybe some others, but for sure, Barnabas and John Mark are there.

Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia.

John, however, left them and went back to Jerusalem.

This is, of course, a reference to John Mark. John Mark left them,

so they're partway through the missionary journey, and he leaves and goes back

to Jerusalem where he's from.

Now, this is an interesting verse. In fact, it's interesting only because of

what happens later. It wouldn't be that super interesting of a verse.

All this verse says is John left them and went back to Jerusalem.

Like John Mark, one of at least three people on this missionary team, left and went back home.

The narrator of the story, his name is Luke, he does not give a reason for why John left.

He doesn't say whether it was good or bad. He just said he left and went back

to Jerusalem. We have no clue what it was. It could be a good reason. it could be a bad reason.

It could be that he was a wimp, right? And he was just like,

oh, this missionary journey is so difficult. I didn't know how hard it would

be. And I love Jesus, but not this much.

And I want to stop. Like it could be that he was just a wimp and he quit halfway through.

Or it could be that he heard, you know, that his grandmother in Jerusalem was

sick and someone needed to take care of her and he needed to go back.

Like we just, we don't know what the reason is. The passage doesn't say,

and in fact, the passage doesn't even make a big deal of this. It's just one sentence.

John left them back to Jerusalem. We wouldn't even know that this is a sentence

that matters, except for a conversation that comes up later on.

And it turns out this was a very big deal.

All right, next page. Going to Acts chapter 14, starting in verse 21.

Acts 14 · chapter mention

This is after John Mark has left the group. Now we're down to Paul,

Barnabas, and maybe some other people, or maybe just Paul and Barnabas at this point.

And I wanted to read to you some of the things that they did in this mission

trip so that you know, like, what is it that these people did when they were

on these mission trips? So I think these verses are pretty representative of

the kind of stuff they did. Acts 14, verse 21.

Acts 14:21

After they had evangelized that town, evangelized meaning told the people about

Jesus that didn't know, and made many disciples.

They returned to Lystra, to Iconium, and to Antioch, strengthening the disciples

by encouraging them to continue in the faith,

and by telling them it is necessary to pass through many troubles on our way into the kingdom of God.

Right? There's going to be rough patches and we're going to have to get through them. Verse 23.

So this is the kind of stuff they did on their missionary journeys. They evangelized.

They encouraged believers. They appointed leaders in the churches before they left.

And then we get to chapter 15, and here's where the story reaches its,

okay, Acts 15 starting, I should have used a word for that rather than a sound

effect, but he's tracking with me, so that's fine.

I just do it for you. All right, so Acts chapter 15 starting in verse 36.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

So this is like the pinnacle of the story when they get into their fight.

Acts 15 starting in verse 36.

After some time had passed, Paul said to Barnabas, let's go back and visit the

brothers in every town where we have preached the message of the Lord and see how they're doing.

Now, when it says after some time had passed, this means the missionary journey

is over. They're done, they're back home, back to normal life.

Probably a few months have gone by.

And then at this point, Paul says to Barnabas, hey, I just got a great idea.

What if we go on another missionary journey? But let's go to the same places

we went to last time. Let's go and do like a follow-up.

Let's go check on all these people, all these churches that we started,

okay? And apparently Barnabas is like, that's a great idea. Let's do it.

Now look at the next verse.

Barnabas wanted to take along John Mark.

But Paul did not think it appropriate to take along this man who had deserted

them in Pamphylia and had not gone on with them to the work.

So they agree, let's go ahead and go on this missionary journey together.

And then Barnabas is like, okay, that sounds great. I'll get John Mark.

You know, Paul's like, what? Why would we bring him? Well, we brought him along last time.

Yeah, he was a loser last time. Right?

So what you can tell here when it says Paul did not think it appropriate to

take along this man and Barnabas wanted to,

whatever the reason was, and to this day we don't know, whatever the reason

was that John Mark went back home, apparently Barnabas did not think it was

as big a deal as Paul did. They disagreed on that.

So when it came time to deciding should he be our assistant this next time,

Barnabas was like, for sure. And Paul said, no way.

Verse 39, there was such a sharp disagreement that they parted company and Barnabas

took Mark with him and sailed off to Cyprus.

Then Paul chose Silas and departed after being commended to the grace of the Lord by the brothers.

He traveled through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.

So they go in two different directions. John, Mark, and Barnabas go to the churches

that like the, to the people that they met early on, on the missionary journey.

And Paul and Silas go to the churches that were like during the second half

of the missionary journey.

So what's interesting in this verse is we see that there's this follow-up trip,

and we see that Paul and Barnabas have two different opinions on whether John

Mark ought to go on the trip, and a compromise could not be reached.

Barnabas said, like, I don't want to go if he's not going. And Paul said,

I'm not going to go if he is going.

And there was no compromise. There was no like, well, what if we bring half of a John Mark?

Like, there was no meeting in the middle. Like, one of them was going to get

it and one of them wasn't. Who's it going to be?

And so they went in two separate directions.

Two of the first ever missionaries parted ways.

And they both kept serving God, but they were serving God in different places

with different teammates.

And then the story doesn't end there. A lot of times people just end the story

there where it's just kind of a wah, wah, and then you move on.

But the story doesn't actually end there. So I wanna show you one more passage

before we close all this out. And it's 2 Timothy chapter four, starting in verse nine.

So 2 Timothy is a letter that Paul wrote to Timothy.

I think pretty much every scholar agrees like the scholars that believe that

the books of the Bible were written by the people that say they wrote them they

would say that 2 Timothy must have been a letter that Paul wrote at the end of his life,

that probably Paul was imprisoned in Rome and this was a letter that he wrote

just before he died and so this is one of the last things we have of what he

said he's in prison in Rome maybe about to be beheaded by Nero or something

like that And he realizes the end is coming soon.

And so he's writing this letter to Timothy saying, like, will you come visit

me one last time before it's all done?

And so this is that part of the letter.

2 Timothy 4, verse 9. Make every effort to come to me soon.

2 Timothy 4:9

He's saying, Timothy, whenever you get this letter, travel to Rome and find me.

I want to see you one last time. Make every effort to come to me soon. Why? Here's why.

For Demas has deserted me because he loved this present world and is gone.

The Thessalonica. Interesting. We don't know much about this guy named Demas,

but apparently what Demas was doing here was the same thing that Paul had accused

John Mark of doing earlier on. He came along and then deserted.

He deserted us because he loved this present world and has gone on to Thessalonica.

He went on to this other, he loves this world more than he does Jesus's mission.

And so he's gone. And now I'm like almost all alone.

Demas has deserted me because he loved this present world and has gone to Thessalonica.

Cretans has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia.

And the fact that Paul does not say anything about Titus and Cretans loving

the world and deserting them makes me think that they probably left Paul for

good reasons. Like they had missionary stuff they needed to do there.

So it looks to me like what Paul is saying here to Timothy is,

I need you to come visit me.

I'm almost all alone. In fact, look, the next sentence is, only Luke is with me, right?

It's just me and Luke here. Everybody has left, some for good reasons,

some for bad reasons. And I really want you to come.

And then he says one last thing. Did you see this? Did anybody read ahead? This is crazy, isn't it?

Only Luke is with me. And then he says, bring Mark with you. What?

Wait, bring Mark with you so that I can cuss him out one last time before I die? No.

Bring Mark with you for he is useful to me in the ministry. What? Wait, Mark is useful?

Who is saying he's useful? Isn't the guy who's saying he's useful the guy that

in Acts chapter 15 was saying he is definitely not and never gonna be useful?

Acts 15 · chapter mention

That's why we don't want him.

And then years later, he says, yeah, you gotta bring him. Yeah,

that would be a big help. What?

It sounds like Paul and Mark obviously did work together again at some point

after Acts 15. And at some point, Paul saw Mark doing ministry and went,

oh, that guy, yeah, he is useful.

That is good. and they work together again. It looks like Paul and Mark and

perhaps Barnabas made up at some point between Acts 15 and 2 Timothy chapter 4.

2 Timothy 4 · chapter mention

Okay, so there's the story. Now, you might go, okay, Mario, that was nice.

Why did you tell us all that? I think that we can learn five lessons from this

story, probably more, but I'm going to give you five lessons.

Lesson number one, God's people are on a mission, which includes declaring the

gospel, showing compassion in times of need, like in a famine.

Encouraging believers, right? That God's mission is not just telling people

who don't know Jesus about Jesus. It's also encouraging people who are already believers.

Organizing churches and following up on previous ministry, right?

God's people are on that mission and we still are.

We are still doing this. We are still doing this when we have worship services

right here in this room where we are teaching the Bible.

So the people who don't know Jesus will come to know him. And so the people

who are already Christians will be encouraged in their faith.

We are still doing this when we have community groups where people minister to one another.

We are still doing this when we host camps for kids in foster care to learn about the love of Jesus.

All right, lesson number two. In God's mission, some people at times have primary

roles while other people have support roles.

I think this is evident by John Mark being referred to as Paul and Barnabas's

assistant. Did you notice that?

The Paul and Barnabas seem to be the more primary missionaries.

John Mark was supposed to be the one that assisted them.

That is good. That is fine. That is normal. And that is still the case within Christianity.

Like sometimes you have community group pastors that oversee community group

leaders, that oversee community group members.

And like here at this church, we have the leader of the hospitality team.

And then you have the members of the hospitality team.

And you have the director of Royal Families Kids Camp. And then you have the

counselors at Royal Families Kids Camp, right?

Some people have more primary roles. Some people have support roles,

totally good and fine and normal and always been that way.

Next lesson, lesson number three. So lesson number one, God's people are on

a mission. Mission number two, some have primary roles, some have support roles.

Lesson number three, Christians disagree.

Did you know that? Yeah, you already knew that. So you knew that,

but at least you know the Bible acknowledges that. That's nothing new.

Christians disagree. And one thing that's interesting about Acts chapter 15,

Acts 15 · chapter mention

I think it's really interesting, is the narrator, Luke, when he tells the story

of their disagreement, he doesn't take a side. Did you notice that?

As best as I can tell, unless he was very subtle, and I missed it.

But it seems to me, he just says, this is what Barnabas thought,

and this is what Paul thought, and they went their separate ways.

And he doesn't take a side. He doesn't say, this is what Barnabas thought.

How naive is he? Can't even spot a loser when it's in front of him.

And Luke doesn't say, this is what Barnabas thought, and this is what Paul thought.

Oh, goodness gracious, so, so unforgiving.

He's a Christian, but he can't even forgive this guy, and he's so judgmental.

That's not the way Luke tells the story. He just says, this is what this guy

thought, this is what this guy thought, and then they went their separate ways.

And it seems to me the fact that he does that, I think, shows that in that disagreement,

I don't think that there was one of the two people that was,

like, wrong in the sense of, like, they were sinning, or they were being wicked.

I just think if that were the case, then the story would have been told differently.

But Barnabas says, no, I think we could trust this guy. And Paul says, we can't trust this guy.

And Luke, as he tells the story, doesn't take a side. And so I think it's very

possible that neither Barnabas nor Paul were wicked when they went their separate

ways and started doing two missionary journeys instead of one.

Another thing that I think is important under this category of Christians disagree

is that sometimes when Christians disagree nowadays, okay, and even part ways

nowadays, it seems to me that there are always people that come along and they'll go, mm-hmm,

look at that, that, that right there, that's what's wrong with the modern church these days.

Because they just, they disagree and they don't get along and they can't figure

out how to work together, that, that, right, that's what's wrong with the modern church.

Okay, and I hear that. I think to myself, modern?

Ha! Like that has been, that's been a thing since the beginning.

There's nothing unique about the modern church where everything was going fine,

and then suddenly, like this past century, we all started disagreeing. No.

There have been disagreements from the beginning. There will be disagreements until Jesus returns.

Not all of them are even wicked.

All right. Lesson number four. So Christians disagree was lesson number three.

Lesson number four is after Christians disagree, relationships can be reconciled.

How fantastic is that? How cool is it that Paul in the last letter that he wrote

said, hey, I need Mark to help me with this.

How cool is that?

All right. The fifth and final lesson. And this one I think is like the big

one, at least in my mind, because this is the one I began with.

Ministry is awesome when you back up and you view the story from a distance.

Ministry is messy when you zoom into a particular circumstance.

The book of Acts is awesome. Acts chapter 15 is a rough patch.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

And this is still true. This is still true in our lives. Some of you,

you became a Christian fairly recently.

You just became a Christian a few years ago. Maybe for some of you, it was a few months ago.

And at first, when you became a Christian, you were so excited.

And you were like, this is so great. What could be better than this?

I'm just, I'm full of the joy of the Lord. I think I'm gonna be happy every

day for the rest of my life.

And I'm gonna serve the Lord. I'm gonna give him my whole life. I'm gonna serve him.

It's going to be so great, right? And then you did that, and it was.

It was exactly what you thought it'd be. And then you hit a rough patch,

and you went, what is going on? I was supposed to say, but this is really difficult.

No one even told me this was coming. I don't feel the joy all the time.

What do I do with this rough patch? And so I just wanted you to know,

like, this is not working. What's going on? I just wanted you to know, like, that's normal.

That's totally normal to hit a rough patch.

Some of you started a ministry or got involved in ministry. You started volunteering at KidZone.

And it went great at first, and then like a psychopath showed up,

like one of those kids that you're like, I can't believe this,

do they not, were they raised by wolves?

You know, and you're like, and then you're like, I don't want to volunteer anymore.

Sorry, I didn't say that in the first service, it was just a rough patch that popped into my mind.

I'm not speaking of any of your children, of course.

Or some of you, like you started a community group and you were like,

this is so great. I'm going to serve the Lord. I'm going to have a community

group. And it was great. It was so great for the first couple of semesters.

And then there was that one couple that started arguing with the other couple,

right? And it's like, and it just was like, it just, they dumped on the vibe

in the room, like over and over and over again.

And you're like, this isn't fun anymore. I thought this was going to be great

serving the Lord. And then the vibe dumper showed up, God, I mean,

I'm trying to serve you and you send me these people that ruin every lesson I try to teach.

And so I guess what I'm saying is if that's happened to you, that's normal.

Some of you are going to camp this week. The mission of camp looks beautiful

right now. Like the day before camp, it always looks great.

And probably next week when it's all said and done and we look back,

we are going to say, that was great, look what God did.

But I'm saying at some point in the middle of this week, maybe it's Tuesday

at 9 a.m., maybe it's Thursday at 11 p.m., but it's gonna get messy for somebody somewhere.

And so I just want you to be ready for that.

In fact, be ready for that just in your regular life, even those of you who

are going to camp. Be ready for that.

When you are in the midst of a rough patch, remember to pull back and see the whole mission of God.

And remember, we are a tiny, tiny, tiny piece of a much larger story.

The story of God reconciling the world to himself through Jesus.

Let's pray.

God, I thank you for these stories that you have in Acts and how applicable they are to us today.

I thank you for just in general, like the Christians that are in this room with

me and the rough patches and the successes and the joy and the difficulties

that we're all going through.

I pray for camp in particular.

I have great thoughts about what you are going to do or what you might do.

But I know that there's going to be difficult parts and somebody's going to

be real frustrated. I know.

I pray that you would help us to be able to have the perspective we need to

be able to look and go, oh, but like Acts 1 and Acts 28.

And sure, this is Acts 15, but the story's not over. The story's not over yet.

And I pray that'd be true not just with people at camp. There's a bunch of us

in this life. Some of us are going into a rough patch right now.

We're like, we barely made it to church.

And I think it's good for us to remember the story's not over.

It's not over, and it's a big, beautiful story that you're telling.

We pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.